House of the Lost (52 page)

‘Did you think it would mean losing him?’ said Theo.

‘Yes, but it no longer mattered. I had known, almost from the first meeting, that for Andrei, Elisabeth was more important than anything I could ever give him. Finding her was his driving passion.’

Romania, mid-1980s

Matthew had always known his father would never be content until he found Elisabeth. He had tried to think of the cloudy-haired woman in the photo as his mother, but he could not, because he had no memory of her.

‘Your father had nightmares in those first years after your mother was taken away,’ Wilma said when they returned to Romania, and made a brief stay at their old house. ‘He used to call out for her in his sleep. He believed she was being held in one of the old gaols. I used to hear him. It was as if he could see the stone cells and the bars at the windows. I’d go along to his bedroom to wake him up, and make him hot milk with brandy in it. But if I’d guessed you were hearing all those nightmares . . .’

‘Only occasionally,’ said Matthew, and because it was dear, loyal Wilma, he added a careful lie, ‘I don’t remember much of it.’

They left the house after one day.

‘We daren’t stay any longer,’ Andrei’s said. ‘The Securitate could be watching; they’ll know it’s a place I’d come to.’

Matthew had no idea if the Securitate would also be watching the convent. He wondered how long they would look for an escaped prisoner. He and Andrei had been in England for almost three months, but perhaps three months was not very long to the cold-eyed men of the Securitate.

They stayed at the convent for several weeks, at first not daring to go out or draw attention to themselves, grateful to Sister Teresa who brought news of what was going on in the outside world.

‘It’s very little different from when you left,’ she said. ‘Although when I go into town, I have the feeling that people are becoming restless, that something might gradually be building up under the surface. We’ll pray for a peaceful outcome, for better times.’

Petra came to visit them the following year. Matthew saw that the attraction between her and his father was still very strong, but he thought it was not quite as strong as it had been in England. She’s letting go, he thought. She understands he’ll spend his whole life trying to find my mother if he has to, and she knows she can’t be part of that.

Even so, when Petra left, she clung to Andrei for a long time.

‘You’ll come back, won’t you?’ said Andrei.

‘If you want me to.’

‘Yes. Oh God, yes, of course I do.’

‘Then I will.’

She had returned each year, spending several weeks with Andrei in spring when Theo was at school, and often in October and November as well. Matthew had left art school by then, and taught at various schools, obtaining posts as near to Andrei as he could. But travelling was difficult – petrol was so strictly rationed it was almost impossible to obtain, and a Sunday curfew was in place. Even electricity was rationed in order to divert the supply to heavy industry, and television – for those who had a set – was reduced to two hours each day. It was whispered that phones were bugged and that one in three Romanians was an informant for the Securitate. A police state, said people, glancing nervously around to make sure they were not overheard.

Matthew managed to stay in work – education seemed to be the one thing Ceau
escu did not restrict – and he hoarded all his earnings so he could one day open his own gallery. It was his dream and his goal, but as the years went by, he wondered if it would ever become a reality.

‘It could become a reality,’ said Petra, when Matthew talked to her about it. ‘You mustn’t lose sight of it, not ever. There’s a line from one of our poets – Tennyson: ‘Follow the gleam.’ Always do that. And something’s starting to happen in this country – can’t you feel it? As if the contents of a huge angry cauldron are simmering just under the surface.’

Matthew had known this for a long time. He sometimes thought it was as if something just out of sight was beating a tattoo on an invisible drum, and the sound was gradually becoming louder and more insistent. He said, ‘What d’you think will happen?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But if I’m right, everything will change. There’s another line from Tennyson, as well. “The old order changeth, giving way to the new”. I don’t know when it will happen, that change, but I hope it’s soon.’

But it was to be another two years before the bubbling cauldron of hatred and discontent finally erupted, and when it did, Petra was back in England.

Romania, December 1989

‘Please stay safe both of you,’ Petra said, just before Christmas. ‘I think Romania’s about to reach explosion point. Those people in the streets last night, the fights and the violence . . .’

‘Some of the streets look like the aftermath of a war,’ said Andrei, his eyes dark with anger and bitterness. ‘Destruction, ash from burned cars, even blood on the pavements . . . Only this isn’t a war.’

‘Isn’t it?’ said Petra. ‘Whatever it is, I think you’re about to see the last act of Ceau
escu’s reign, and if I could stay on to see it with you I would, but—’

‘But you must be back to spend Christmas with Theo,’ Andrei said. ‘Of course you must. And we’ll be safe. I’m a survivor. Matthew too.’

‘So you are,’ she said, managing a smile. ‘I was forgetting that.’ So Petra went back to England, and three days later, the dam that had held in so much anger and defiance for so many years, finally burst. A great tidal wave of rebellion cascaded across the country, sweeping aside everything in the pent-up longing for freedom from a dictator’s iron rule.

Matthew and his father were in the centre of Bucharest as people from all walks of life poured into the city from outlying districts. Martial law had been announced with a ban on groups larger than five people. But, incredibly, hundreds of thousands of people were gathering spontaneously, apparently prepared to brave the soldiers and tanks drafted in by Ceau
escu’s henchmen.

‘And helicopters,’ said Matthew, looking up at the sudden whirr of machinery in the skies. ‘They’re dropping leaflets.’

‘And d’you know what the leaflets tell us to do?’ said a man next to him. ‘To go home and enjoy the Christmas feast! Dear God, don’t the devils know we have to queue up for hours to even get a drop of cooking oil!’

‘He’s coming out onto the balcony,’ said someone else. ‘Ceau
escu himself. There he is, the cruel greedy bastard!’

As Nicolae Ceau
escu began an impassioned speech, Matthew’s father said, softly, ‘He’s not reaching them. Look at their faces, Matthew, look at the hatred and the anger. He’s lost them, and the terrible thing is that he doesn’t realize it.’

‘A few people near the front are cheering him,’ said Matthew, a bit doubtfully.

‘It’s frightened cheering. They’re probably Securitate plants,’ said Andrei, still keeping his voice low, mindful of eavesdroppers.

As Matthew listened to Ceau
escu reminding his audience of the achievements of the socialist revolution, about the multi-laterally developed society he had created, he knew his father was right. Ceau
escu was grasping at the vanishing remnants of power. His voice was taking on a strained, desperate note and the crowd was becoming restless. This is it, he thought. This is what Petra meant when she talked about the old order changing. It’s changing now, here, in this square. Something new is struggling to be born. It won’t be an easy birth and people will be hurt in the process, but if it can really happen it will be the turning point. It will sweep away the decades of dreary poverty and despair.